'Horror Story': Flight Logs Reveal Dozens Disappeared on El Salvador Deportation Trips

https://www.commondreams.org/news/deportation-flight

'Horror Story': Flight Logs Reveal Dozens Disappeared on El Salvador Deportation Trips

"This further demonstrates the callousness and lack of due process involved and is further evidence that the U.S. government is disappearing people," said one immigrant rights advocate.

JULIA CONLEY
Jul 17, 2025

"These were disappearances," said one immigrant rights expert of the revelation that dozens of people who have never been acknowledged by the Trump administration were listed on flight manifests for three deportation flights from Texas to El Salvador in March.

404 Media reported Thursday that in May, a hacker targeted the airline that operated the flights, which have been challenged in court by groups including the ACLU and Democracy Forward. The data retrieved by the hacker showed that in addition to people whose names had been previously included on a list of deported migrants deported to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), published by CBS News, more than 40 men and women were listed on flight manifests for planes that the Trump administration sent on March 15

The CBS News story reported on 238 people who had been sent to CECOT without due process, under a $6 million deal with far-right President Nayib Bukele, but the list compiled from the flight manifests puts the total number at at least 281.

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Keider Alexander Flores Navas' mother, Ana Navas, said in a TikTok video in March that she suddenly stopped hearing from him the day the deportation flights took off—and then saw him in a photo of prisoners at CECOT.

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